“I wanted to raise enough to not give him odds to draw” - “I was hoping to knock some players out when I made it two bets” - “Limit sucks, you can’t make anyone fold”

You know what these three statements have in common? They’re common, that’s what.

Also, they sort of boil down to something that seems to be some people’s no-limit mantra: Don’t give your opponents odds to draw. That means that if there’s someone with a flushdraw, you want to put enough money in the pot to make it unprofitable for him (in the long run, as always) to call, or same thing for someone drawing to a straight. The idea itself is good; If you can force your opponents to fold, the money that is in the pot will belong to you, without you having to go through a scary showdown where your hand may or may not hold up.

(This post valid for limit hold ‘em)

It seems obvious to me that a lot of players select tables based on opposition, which is smart. I say it’s obvious, because it seems that it’s always the loose tables with big pots that fill up first and even have waiting lists, meanwhile tight tables with small pots remain 4-handed. Did you notice this phenomenon? Do you perhaps yourself use this method to select tables? Chances are you do. Now, a table with big pots and a high share of players who see the pot is, in essence, a loose-aggressive table and the epitome of a loose-aggressive player is commonly referred to as “the maniac.” You’ve all played him, I’m sure. He likes to bet, raise and re-raise often. He sees an average amount of flops, but when he’s in the hand, he will fight to defend his right to win it.

This is a really, really basic post about pot odds and why calling with a hand that isn’t best is actually correct in many situations. If you know what pot odds are, you needn’t continue, but if you think someone calling with an inside straight draw is always a stupid player, you may want to continue. I need to get this off my chest.

Here’s the deal: An inside straight draw has, and let’s make it simple, a 10% of hitting. Look at what happens when the pot is really big and you make a small bet (e.g. a raised pot after the flop with many players in it in limit hold ‘em, for instance): If the pot is 10 bets at that point, it’s going to be 11 bets when you bet, and someone with an inside straight is investing one more bet to win 11. 10% of the time, he’ll win the pot, and 90% of the time, he’ll lose one bet.

In limit hold ‘em, the biggest mistakes are almost always made on the river. While river play is far from an easy thing to teach - since so much of it relies on reads and perception of the situation - there are a couple of basic things that can at least be avoided. The one I want to address specifically today is the worse-than-worthless river bet, the bet with a decent hand that will actually cost you money in the long run.

Let me kick off with an example of what I’m talking about:

It’s folded to you, and you have AKs in middle position. You raise. The button cold-calls, and the big blind calls. The flop comes 8-J-8, one in your suit.

After having told you how great raising is, and how much you can gain from it, I want to warn about being overly aggressive and laying implied odds. Playing sound poker and raising at the right times is great, but it can clearly be overdone, and when I’m playing shorthanded I see a lot of that happening. Let me give a limit short-handed example:

$3/$6 limit Hold ‘em, 6-handed.

The aggressive MP raises, CO calls and you call from the big blind with Q9s. There’s nothing wrong with making that call, in case anyone thought so. You’re being offered 5:1 on your money, and you have some high-card strength, suited cards and a longshot to hit a straight. A flop is worth seeing.

“Tight and aggressive,” “Don’t be a calling station,” “it’s either raise or fold,” “protect your hand,” etc. I could go on for awhile, there are quite a few of these catch-phrases or poker-wisdom-tidbits, and a lot of them suggest that raising is better than calling. In a game as complex as poker, there aren’t any “nevers” and “always’s” but generally, raising seems to be popular among experts. For good reasons, one can presume.

The beginner will think of raising as something you do in mostly two situations: When you (think you) have the best hand, and when you’re bluffing. The more experienced players will recognize that there are many different reasons for raising and have a much more nuanced picture of the action than just “best hand” and “bluff.” Right?

I will generalize some in this post, so I apologize in advance to some of my more anal retentive readers. It’s probably also more true for limit hold ‘em than no-limit.

I’ve said before that poker learning is cyclical; about how you go through various stages of confidence, and how when you pick up something new you almost wonder how you could possibly have been doing alright at all before. I feel like I’m in a constant state of being a beginner. This doesn’t bother me though, I like keeping the perspective of a learner.

However, there’s another idea that I’ve started to toy with: It seems to me like the stages of learning are also often directly related to the streets that we play. Let me give an example:

So while I’m playing mostly no-limit now, I still have some things to share regarding limit hold ‘em play that some of you might find useful. I think about these things especially now that I identify situations where no-limit and limit play differ a lot. I know that a lot of people play no-limit these days, and many of you never really played limit at all. Here’s a situation where the two games differ wildly:

Sometimes in limit hold ‘em, just calling down shows the largest profit.

So I played some NL last night. I fooled around with the $25 buy-in table, mostly because I figured I had to start somewhere and that somewhere seemed like a decent place. I figure I’ll try to win 20 buy-ins and then move up to $50, etc. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve also decided to document whatever realizations I come to in this blog. Bear in mind that I’m predominantly a limit player - although it’s not like I’ve never sat at a NL table before, I just haven’t done it extensively - so I anticipate that most of my first posts on the topic will be in regards to things I notice that differ between the two types of the game. So what’s my first lesson?

(I’ve been told that Iggy put up a link to this blog somewhere in an ocean of links. In the odd case that any of his readers accidently clicked that specific link and found their way here - welcome.)

Okay, so I didn’t actually intend to make this a two part post about close calls, but I made an adjustment this past week that is somewhat related to close calls, so I wanted to add something about it.